


you can call me E.T.

by nasaplates



Category: C-Pop, EXO (Band), K-pop
Genre: Alien Biology, Alien Gender/Sexuality, Alien!Kris, Alternate Universe - Space, Astronaut!Junmyeon, Astronauts, Break Up, Depression, Developing Relationship, Fake Science, Falling In Love, Happy Ending, Light Angst, Light Dom/sub, Loneliness, Lots of it, M/M, Presumed Main Character Death, Science Fiction, Slow Burn, Sort Of, Tentacles, at the end of ch 1 REMEMBER I TAGGED NO ARCHIVE WARNINGS, bad social skills, bittersweet ending i suppose, but it's only a vague mention!, but krisho is the focus, but maybe not the ending you're expecting, discovering sexuality, eventual junmyeon/sehun, i only have vague knowledge of physics forgive me, i'm talking about tentacles, loss of a loved one, minor nonhuman sex mentions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-11
Updated: 2019-06-11
Packaged: 2020-04-24 11:06:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19172014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nasaplates/pseuds/nasaplates
Summary: Kim Junmyeon was having as normal a day as could be expected when hurtling through uncharted space in a one man vessel. And then a 6'2" man (Alien? Man. Thing.) with amulletappeared on his 'ship.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> this bizarre little brain child has been a LONG time coming. it all started with a couple of friends joking around about what an absolute nerd kris wu is, and what he'd be like as an _actual alien_ and then it grew something like a plot, and _feelings_. if this makes any sense to anyone outside of my own mind, I will be pleasantly surprised. please enjoy.
> 
> as always, this wouldn't be possible without you len. I love you and your big stupid goofball of a husband.
> 
> ***
> 
> [[ PLEASE HEED ALL TAGS!!! read safely, loves, this fic is meant to be largely sweet and healing but it DOES deal w some heavy themes ❤ always message me if you have questions! ]]

He knows about humans.

Well.

Back up, he is a he. Sort of. Insomuch as he is a gender, he likes himself best as a he. It's a new concept for him, and one he would've ignored entirely except he knows about humans.

He knows about earth and he knows about death and he knows about basketball. He likes to whisper (or is it shout? He has never been able to tell the difference) “alley OOP!” to the stars sometimes. Maybe they hear him but they've never said. Maybe they like football, or tennis, or don't like sports at all.

He is alone. He is also everywhere all at once but that is exhausting. He hasn't had the energy for it in whatever measurement for time counts as “a while.” So he makes himself small and stretches only the parts of himself he needs to pick up and1 basketball youtube videos and his favorite hip hop radio station.

He floats.

He is alone.

Until, he is not.

 

***

 

Kim Junmyeon was having a perfectly normal, really very nice day.

He was hurtling through space at heretofore impossible speed in a single man vessel headed to nowhere in particular, so, honestly, really very nice translated roughly to “oh my god I'm losing my fucking mind” but he couldn't put that in the logs. If he did the boys would worry and that never went over well. Chanyeol dropped things even more often than usual, and what's worse, _frowned_. He didn’t like to think about what fresh hell any of the rest of them were cooking up without him there to keep an eye on them, but in the boring moments (and there were a _lot_ of boring moments) he’d get vivid images of Jongdae with that somewhat demonic grin of his and shudder.

Point is, no one back home (on _Earth_ , for fuck’s sake) needed to know he was losing his god damn shit.

So, Kim Junmyeon was having a perfectly normal, really very nice day, when a 6’2” hallucination appeared in the ‘ship’s tiny kitchen.

Jun ignored the stupidly tall figment of his imagination aggressively, but even so certain facts seeped through: The hallucination had a mullet. The hallucination appeared to be a dude. He (if that was the appropriate pronoun, and why the fuck was he considering the pronouns of a very worrying symptom of extreme isolation) was wearing a shirt that looked like it had hoped to be a rich white lady’s countertop in a previous life. He was, if Junmyeon was honest with himself (and he almost never was), weirdly attractive. Worryingly attractive. What in the actual fuck.

“Sup,” the hallucination said, and of course even his voice was attractive. Junmyeon always had hated himself just a little bit more than was healthy.

Since the apparition was apparently speaking to him, he figured it’d be rude to keep ignoring it, so he blurted out the first thing that came to mind.

“Aren’t you cold?”

_Smooth, Jun. Mother hen your own brain malfunction why don’t you._

Mullet man stared, hard, and then blinked rapidly for at least ten seconds. “Errrrrrrr” he said, subtly shifting side to side repetitively. “Yee yee.” He waved his enormous hands, fingers arranged in a strangely awkward peace sign, in front of his face, and then, with an almost comical ‘POP,’ disappeared.

 _Right_ , Junmyeon thought, _perfectly normal, really very nice day._

 

***

 

He was expecting something...different.

He did not know what, exactly. But being asked if he was cold was not it.

He had thought he knew enough about humans to speak to one, finally, now that one had come close enough for his small form to reach, but he is now reconsidering everything.

Humans are so odd. Odd and small, tiny, not even noticing when he stretched himself in non-body ways, trying to reach thoughts that weren’t even thoughts at all more like another tiny galaxy filled with very clumsy cats and penises and food. And very warm things that seem to be “friends” but he only got a glimpse of that before he had to make himself small again.

Too much input.

Too much...everything.

He almost lets the small vessel and the small man glide away without him, almost lets his now invisible form seep through the floor and the engines and the outer wall to be left behind, without confusion, or the pain of lights made for human eyes, or words that don’t fit right on his human tongue. But then he remembers aloneness. And the stars that never say anything back no matter how loud he yells.

He sits his human-invisible self in a chair, tucks his knees to his chest, and stays.

 

***

 

Three days after The Event That Will Not Be Going Into The Logs Thank You Very Much, Junmyeon was recording a video for his boys when the hallucination returned.

He was in the middle of telling Jongin that, while he does look honestly fan-fucking-tastic in crop tops, he really _might_ want to consider wearing a coat since it’s the middle of Seoul’s fall, when suddenly mullet man was leaning over his shoulder to look at the ‘screen. Junmyeon yelped. Mullet man (who didn’t actually have a mullet this time and was instead sporting a buzz cut) didn’t even react, staring very intently at the camera’s recording.

“Huh,” he said, “so that’s what I look like to you.”

Jun, still trying to slow his hammering heart, took a second to catch up. When he did, he whipped his head from the man’s (actually really nice) profile to his computer screen, where, sure enough, a mirrored and slightly washed out reproduction of the figment of Junmyeon’s imagination was tilting its head back and forth a bit like a toddler impersonating a snake.

“Oh fuck,” Junmyeon muttered. _Really not putting this in the logs_ , he thought, before impulsively doing the only thing that made sense when a maybe-hallucination was suddenly being registered by technology: he poked him in the fleshiest part of his cheek.

The man startled back like a cat, hand going straight to the place Junmyeon had just touched (and it had felt _so real_ ) and almost tripped over his own enormous feet.

“Dude,” the man (and holy fuck _it was actually a man)_  muttered, suddenly switching to English for no apparent reason, “What the fuck, bro?”

Junmyeon blinked, slowly, hoping if he did maybe the past minute would make more sense. When it didn’t, he grinned as charmingly as he could.

The man narrowed his eyes at him and disappeared, this time with a sound closer to a squeak.

“Well,” Junmyeon whispered to himself, letting the smile drop, “at least I'm not bored.”

He turned back to his still recording video, intending to delete it, but he hesitated and clicked the save button instead.

 

***

 

He spreads himself, irate and buzzing with it, wraps himself around the ship like a cloak.

Watches the human speaking to the camera, speaking to his _friends_. Watches the stars and the planets and the swirls of spacedust sliding past.

Thinks about the human’s skin on his skin.

Thinks about how nice more of that might be.

Burrows a tendril of himself into the ship’s temperature controls and coaxes it into decreasing _just_ below where the human likes it to be.

If he had a face in this form, he would be smirking.

 

***

 

Junmyeon drew the line the third time the man appeared. It was all well and good for a hallucination to invade his personal space, but when a real actual physical being suddenly wedged his way into the already too tiny shower cubicle with him, something had to give.

“Ok, that's _it_ ,” he started to say, before he turned and saw that the man was drenched from the shower spray, his blue tinted oversized glasses beading up and obscuring his bemused eyes.

“Oh no,” he said, “you're soaked, come on, get out, you'll catch cold.”

Junmyeon ushered the man out of the shower and the two steps it took to get to the sleeping alcove, gently grasping his shoulders and pushing him into a chair before grabbing him, and himself, towels. Before he could even think twice about the entire situation he was ruffling the man's hair (shaggy again, and red, fading to pink, with dark roots showing) with the towel.

The man squawked, batting his hands at Junmyeon and tried to lean away. Figuring he’d embarrassed them both plenty (and gotten the man's hair at least reasonably dry) he let the towel drop over the man's face and tied his own towel tightly around his waist before the man could dig his way out of the fabric.

Junmyeon took a half step back and put his hands on his hips. “Listen,” he said in his best ‘I'm a very responsible leader’ voice, “I don't mind you hanging out here but if you're gonna be staying then we have to set some ground rules.”

The man blinked, fingers still tangled in the towel now around his shoulders, hair an absolute wreck that Junmyeon very much did not find adorable.

“The first rule,” Jun continued, pointing now for emphasis, “is no,” he paused, searching for the right word, gesturing ineffectually with his pointer finger, “ _apparating_ in my _shower_. Or anywhere else in my bathroom. Or anywhere near me when I am _naked_.” Junmyeon leaned forward, pointing at his face even more aggressively. “Got it?”

The man narrowed his eyes a moment, gaze flicking over Junmyeon's shoulder and around his head before resettling on Jun's face. There was a smirk Junmyeon did not like playing at the corners of his (lush _god please why is he so pretty_ ) lips.

“Did you seriously just compare me to Harry Potter?”

Junmyeon blinked. “You know Harry Potter?”

The man snorted. “Please, you humans haven't shut up about it, like, ever. At all.”

Junmyeon blinked again and the man's smirk grew. “I'm a Slytherin, by the way. And for the record you missed an excellent opportunity to make a sick E.T. reference.” He brought his own index finger up in a mirror of Junmyeon's, which he still had pointed at the man's face. His fingertip began to glow, and, in a disturbingly accurate impression he said, “E.T. phone home.”

The man slowly let his fingertip fade back to normal, an enormous childlike smile on his face.

Once Junmyeon had suitably recovered, he brandished his own finger at his face. “Right then, E.T., rule number two is you never fucking do that voice ever again.”

The man laughed, rocking with it, and Junmyeon was helpless in the face of it, laughing along like the sound was falling into the gravity of this strange being's simple joy.

When their laughter had calmed enough for Junmyeon to realize he was really cold, actually, because he was still one towel away from naked, he crossed his arms over his chest and started chafing his hands up and down his own biceps. He didn't miss the way the man's eyes followed the movement, traced his abs and then skittered away to roam the extremely boring ceiling. He decided not to comment and filed the moment away for later consideration.

“So,” he said into the almost awkward quiet, spinning on his heel to start looking for clothes, “what's your name anyway? If you're gonna keep popping up I should at least know what to call you.”

“Kris,” the man replied, surprising Junmyeon with the immediate answer. And maybe a bit with how...white it was. The man (being, whatever) very much was not white.

Some of his surprise must have registered in his body language because the man chuckled and continued in rapid fire Mandarin. Junmyeon's Chinese was rusty (he tried not to think about why, about how long it had been since he'd spoken to Zitao, how little he had seen of Yixing even before this mission had begun) but he picked up ‘My name is Wu Yifan,’ something about his mother (so he _did_ have a mother) and, bizarrely, something about Canada.

Junmyeon did his best to reciprocate in halting Mandarin, telling him his name (“Wo shi, ah fuck, wo jiao Kim Junmyeon”) and trying to figure out how to say the ship was named Antares, but Kris saved him by laughing and interrupting.

“It's cool, dude, Korean is chill, English is dope, it's whatever man.” Kris smiled, and Junmyeon tried not to want to wrap him up in a blanket and keep him happy forever. He could hear Minseok laughing at him in the back of his mind when he failed.

 

***

 

He doesn’t feel cold, or warm, like a human does. Even in his human skin he feels nothing that compares to the chill of space, or the heat of stars. He folds himself into the engine compartment once, touches it with his hand, lets the skin redden and burn, and feels nothing. He touches the window that always makes the human shiver when he stands in front of it too long, presses his palm to it until his fingertips turn blue, and feels nothing.

He laughs with another being for the first time and wonders if the feeling is anything like warmth.

 

***

 

Junmyeon had been working on reports (endless reports, so many fucking reports) when he’d looked up and Kris had been standing there in sweatpants and a hoodie, staring at his badly burned hand like it had offended him personally.

In a second Junmyeon was on his feet and cradling his hand between his palms, letting out a quiet pained sound of sympathy.

“Here, let me,” he said, reaching to his left to rummage through a drawer for the first aid kit, keeping Kris’s hand cupped gently in his own. Once he’d found what he was looking for he turned back and to his shock the once mottled skin was completely unscathed.

He looked up, mouth open in surprise, to see Kris looking at him intently, a smile softly playing at the corner of his mouth.

“I’m, uh, not. Like you, y’know?” he mumbled in the small space between them.

“I can see that,” Junmyeon said, frowning a little, refusing to break eye contact first. When Kris finally looked to the side and gently pulled his hand away, Junmyeon asked, gently, tilting his head to try to catch Kris’s eyes, “Do you,” he paused, rethought the phrasing, “Who, exactly, are you like?”

Kris refused the eye contact for a long moment, face turned to the side, jaw clenching. When he finally looked at Junmyeon, his face was somehow both solemn and fierce.

“My mother.” He swallowed. “I’m like my mom.”

Junmyeon leaned back against the counter, next to Kris now, shoulder almost pressed to his arm. “Tell me about her,” he said, and after a long moment, he did.

Very little of it made sense, really, from Junmyeon’s perspective. A lot about bigness and smallness, softness and hardness. Something that sounded more like it belonged in an astrophysics paper than coming out of the mouth of this softly smiling man, told like an old childhood story. But what did make sense to Junmyeon, was the love that enveloped every word. And maybe the regret, too.

After he’d wound down a bit, and a warm moment of silence passed, Kris said, “You didn’t understand a word of that, did you?”

Junmyeon glanced at him, mirrored the small smile on his face. “No. But also, yes, I think.” He hesitated before continuing. “What happened?”

Kris clenched his jaw again, tapped his fingers on his thigh, took a deep breath. “I got lost. I don’t remember much about it, but I think I tried to do something, something big. And I couldn’t, and the next thing I knew I was here. And I couldn’t find her, or anyone else.”

Junmyeon leaned firmly into Kris, rested his head on his shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. Kris shrugged, gently enough not to dislodge Junmyeon.

“It is what it is,” he murmured. “I found humans. You’re not home, but your music is pretty dope.”

With a chuckle Junmyeon picked up his head and squeezed Kris’s forearm gently. He shuffled over to the computer, still open to his unfinished reports. He ignored them and started up his favorite playlist. When Kris beamed and started rapping along to the music, Junmyeon took a small moment before joining in to recognize that he was, quite possibly, completely fucked.

 

***

 

He’s still in his human form. He has stayed in it for three Earth days. It’s small and confining and his clothes have started to make his skin _itch_ but he doesn’t want to leave. Even when the human sleeps, he stays.

The stars don’t play him music. The stars don’t touch his skin. The stars don’t smile back.

 

***

 

After three days of Kris hanging out with him, staying visible and present the whole time, Junmyeon felt like he’d lost his mind for an entirely new reason. No one, human, alien, demigod, _actual god,_  had any business looking _that fucking good_. Especially when they went through at least ten outfits a day, each of them more bizarre and objectively _bad_ than the last.

He did come out of the bathroom once to Kris, lounging on the tiny loveseat in jeans, Converse, a leather jacket, and dark hair styled back. Junmyeon turned around and went right back into the bathroom and splashed cold water on his face. By the time he came out again Kris was in a massively oversized sweater and mismatched hammer pants. Junmyeon couldn’t decide if he was disappointed or relieved.

After a second glance at Kris, Junmyeon realized he was looking a bit down, and more fidgety than usual (well, what seemed usual, it was hard to say what counted as “usual” for a...multidimensional incorporeal being that occasionally made himself look human, had a heart of gold, and laughed at his own jokes).

“Hey,” Junmyeon said, intending to ask what was wrong. When Kris looked up, eyes entirely too intense, Junmyeon changed tactic. “I’ve been wondering,” he paused, watching Kris tense, “what the _fuck_ is going on with your hair?”

The other man blinked for a second, tried to hide his smile with a frown, and started idly petting his incredibly messy and frankly ridiculous mullet. “What’s wrong with my hair, man?”

“It’s a mullet! It’s an insult to mullets! You’re literally the only being I’m aware of that can instantly make their hair look however you want and you go with,” Junmyeon gestured dramatically, “an abstract artist’s drunken interpretation of a cat!”

Kris froze, mouth gaping open, before spluttering, “A _cat_?” He stood up, towering over Junmyeon, who had started to doubt the wisdom of teasing a...whatever he was.

“I can’t, a CAT?” Kris started pacing and petting his hair again. He stopped and pointed a finger at Junmyeon. “It does _not_ look like a cat, it looks _cool_.”

Junmyeon smirked and raised an eyebrow, reaching up to tug gently on a strand of mullet. “Here, kitty kitty.”

Kris’s eyes went huge and round for a second, before narrowing, his mouth snapping shut. “Ugh!” he exploded, slapped Junmyeon’s hand out of his hair, and marched across the room, through the wall, and turned back to glare at Junmyeon from _outside the window_ before disappearing in an honest to god puff of smoke.

Junmyeon knew retribution was coming, but for now he tossed his head back and laughed.

 

***

 

He does _not_ look like a cat.

He is _cool_.

He slips into the ship’s computer and slides the temperature controls up, and with a vindictive spark convinces it not to change for anyone but him.

Satisfied, he flattens himself on top of the speeding ship, stretches long and thin until he can just catch the second half of the Lakers game, admires the player’s tattoos.

He thinks about Junmyeon, who is humming distractedly and taking off his sweater.

He thinks, maybe, he is something like happy.

 

***

 

Junmyeon was _melting_.

The temperature in the ‘ship was well above normal levels, well above comfortable levels. It was like Seoul on the hottest day of the year, the air dry but sweltering. He’d known it was Kris the minute he noticed the sweat beading on his brow, but he’d been certain of it when he’d gone into the computer and only gotten an error message in response to all his attempts to regulate the temperature, _Error: Unauthorized user,_ , flashing across the screen.

Junmyeon was pissy about it at first. Such a waste of valuable energy. Although he wasn’t sure precisely how the temperature regulation worked, that was always Kyungsoo’s department, the physics of it all. But the window was freezing, so he assumed raising the temperature in the ship was a drain on the systems.

Once he went in and found that the fuel was at steady levels (it’s a delicately balanced renewable system, again, more Kyungsoo’s specialty, and Chanyeol’s too) he begrudgingly accepted the situation, grumbling as he took off his shirt, left in a tank top and his loose workout pants.

Laid out flat on the floor, too hot to work, Junmyeon thought about Kris. He was always thinking about Kris, now, whether he wanted to be or not, somewhere in the back of his mind. He thought about how lonely he must have been, how little he understood what his life must be like. He thought about how beautiful he was. He hitched his tank top up and scratched idly at his belly and thought about how Kris would have tracked the movement with his eyes and then darted them away again if he’d been there.

A grin slowly formed on Junmyeon’s face and he sat up, pulling the tank top over his head as he went. Two could play this game, he thought, and he stood and striped off his pants. Padding to his sleeping quarters in only his briefs (expensive, a dark blue, one of his only personal splurges in clothing, it was worth it for everything to hold him just right, and he might not have expected anyone else to be up there with him but he still liked to look good for himself), he settled in to wait.

It didn’t take long before he felt the gentle shift that always signaled Kris coming back into visible existence on the ship. He could never tell if it was a sound, or a vibration, or something else that told him he was there, but it was something that had become second nature in his awareness.

Smirking privately, he straightened from where he’d been bent over tidying things off the floor and turned to face the door of the sleeping quarters, where a very stunned looking Kris was now standing, one hand half raised as if he was about to wave but his digits didn’t know how to arrange themselves after that particular view of Junmyeon’s ass.

Kris was wearing a basketball jersey, Golden State Warriors, Junmyeon thought. He didn’t follow basketball enough to know who number 30 was, or if the jersey was even from the current team. It looked a little old school, something about it feeling just a touch out of date. His hair was blond today, which only served as even more obvious contrast to his skin, which was slowly turning a frankly alarming shade of purple. His eyes were frozen latched onto the front of Junmyeon’s briefs. Junmyeon’s dick twitched at the attention.

“Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhh” Kris finally said, sounding less like a confused dudebro and more like an android whose voice functions were glitching. His eyes were now roaming all over Junmyeon’s body at superhuman speed, and just when Junmyeon was getting actually concerned, he shut his mouth with a click, threw up a peace sign, turned around, smacked into the wall, bounced off, shook himself like a dog, and popped out of existence with a high pitched “EEP!”

Junmyeon threw his head back and laughed.

 

***

 

He is feeling so much, an incomprehensible amount, more than he thought a human body could ever feel with its human limitations. He thinks about Junmyeon’s warm bare skin, and his warm bare smile, and the tantalizing bits of him that were still covered, the way that Kris wants to be enveloped by his warm bare body. The hints of this _feeling_ have been there but he did not see, he did not know, he had no frame of reference for _this_.

He is standing on the outside hull of the ship and his human body is flushed and full and empty and _hard_ and when he touches himself he is on _fire_.

He tethers himself to a bolt in the hull of the ship and then he is expanding expanding expanding stretching stretching all the way to the sun in this galaxy to the hottest place he can find to the only place that feels like it is boiling and writhing and aching like he is and he wraps himself in it he wraps himself in all the suns in all the galaxies he presses presses presses let him closer let him take let him _give_ let him fill the gaps and _release_ -

The star goes supernova and maybe he _is_ the star he cannot tell because he is everywhere again, everywhere all at once, for one long moment he is everything.

He drifts back into himself, slowly, like a balloon that has been stretched and all the air is let out again. He comes back into his smaller form, floating along with the ship, tethered still, somehow, to that one tiny bolt in the hull.

He shrinks until he is so small the motherboard of the ship looks like a city on earth rising around him. He floats among the high rise resistors and imagines a universe where he is simple, with a simple form. He imagines being something Junmyeon could understand. He imagines he is a man, a real man, that Junmyeon, with his simple heart, could love.

 

***

 

Two days passed before Junmyeon saw Kris again.

The first day he spent in frantic distraction after the sensors gathered a very unusual blip of high energy readings. It wasn’t until he pulled clothes on a couple hours in, completely on autopilot, that he realized the temperature was back to normal, and he decided that was a sign Kris was fine, and doing whatever beings like himself did when they were having what looked to have been a nice little gay panic. So, he smirked to himself, shrugged, and kept putting together data packets to send back to the boys on Earth.

He’d just woken up on the third day and shuffled into the tiny kitchen alcove in sweatpants and an old NASA t-shirt when he felt that shift in the atmosphere that told him Kris was corporeal again. Junmyeon finished pouring his coffee before he turned and leaned back against the counter.

Kris was standing there, closer than Junmyeon expected, close enough he had to tilt his head back just a touch. He was wearing nice clothes, black pants and a black high collared suit jacket, the first three shirts unbuttoned revealing a white tank underneath. His hair was black and just long enough to be almost messy. There was a small bouquet of flowers in his hand, a red rose, a few red carnations just blooming, a spray of delicate white baby’s breath. His eyes were as intense as Junmyeon had ever seen them.

Without saying a word, eyes still intensely locked on Junmyeon, Kris took two careful, measured steps forward until he could place his hands on the edge of the counter on either side of Junmyeon’s body. They were sharing body heat, and Junmyeon privately marveled at the familiarity of the sensation in spite of their differences.

Kris doesn’t kiss him. He obviously wanted to, with the way his eyes kept flicking to his mouth, and his mouth was parted and red. Junmyeon didn’t realize what was odd about it until he registered that Kris’s chest was unmoving, not even pretending to need the oxygen in his palpable anxiety. They stayed there, frozen, inches apart, one of them panting, the other inhumanly still.

Finally, Junmyeon reached up and weaved a gentle hand into the long hair at the back of Kris’s neck and pulled him in. He stopped them both so close their lips just barely brushed with every one of Junmyeon’s exhales. He waited. Kris stared at him from millimeters away like he was making the most important decision of his life. Junmyeon stared back, open, waiting, not with patience, but with steady certainty.

Kris made a low sound and mashed their faces together, painful, but sweet in his enthusiasm. Gently, with a calm that went contrary to his racing heart, Junmyeon pulled him back, hand pressed to the side of his face, fingers on his bemusing, stuttering pulse. Junmyeon held him there, Kris’s head dipped down and Junmyeon’s only just tipped upward, and nipped, carefully, at his lips. Soft, slow, unfulfilling kisses slipped against his mouth with long breaths between. He could feel Kris straining underneath his hand and so he didn’t stop with the tease, never giving Kris more than phantom brushes of his mouth, tugs of his lips, breath and heat and sweet sips and nothing more.

With a moan that came from somewhere deep within him, Kris finally melted against him, every muscle going loose, pliant against Junmyeon’s body. They were molded together, toe to groin to chest to mouth, and with a controlled hunger, Junmyeon coaxed his mouth open and set to devouring him. Hands tangled in his hair, tongue dipping deep between his pliant lips, Junmyeon tasted electricity, and heat, and the indescribable flavor of the first breath of air after a spacewalk. Their erections pressed together and Kris _shuddered_.

Pressing one hand to Kris’s hip, and never once breaking the kiss, Junmyeon walked them steadily back towards the sleeping alcove, and his bed. Kris’s enormous hand roved all across Junmyeon’s back, reaching down to squeeze his ass. His other hand pressed to his shoulder, still clutching the flowers. When the backs of Kris’s knees hit the mattress, Junmyeon pushed him just hard enough he fell backwards to the bed, eyes wide, mouth open, as if he’d had no clue they had ever left the kitchen.

Junmyeon took the moment to tug his t-shirt over his head and grinned at the small sound Kris made over his bare chest. He sucked in a breath when Kris sat up and traced a hand over the defined muscles of his stomach, his chest, suppressed a shiver when his fingers brushed first one nipple then the other. Junmyeon trapped that hand against his chest, over his heart, and seeing that he still clutched the flowers in his other hand, Junmyeon reached down and gently pulled them out of his grasp, taking a breath of them before he set them down on the side table.

When he turned back to look at Kris, the man was completely nude and Junmyeon sucked in a breath at the sight of him. Everything about him was long, and lean, covered in lightly defined muscles. His hard cock was longer than average, and fatter too, dark and leaking against his stomach. Kris wilted under the scrutiny, tried to pull his hand back so he could curl up into himself but Junmyeon didn’t let him, pressing a lingering kiss to the palm instead.

“I can,” Kris started, barely above a murmur, not quite reaching Junmyeon’s eyes. “Um, I could be,” he paused again, swallowed, Adam's apple bobbing. “Different,” he spat out, finally, “I could be different, a, um. A g-girl, even, if you,” another pause, another swallow, “if there’s something you like. Better.”

Junmyeon’s heart clenched painfully in his chest, but he stubbornly refused to let it show on his face. He waited, pressed more kisses to his palm, to the pad of each finger, to his wrist. He didn’t speak until Kris met his eyes, and held them.

“You’re beautiful,” he said, mouth brushing the veins along the underside of Kris’s wrist. “I like you, however you want to be.” Junmyeon slowly pressed a trail of kisses down his forearm, along his bicep, across his shoulder, only taking his eyes away from Kris’s face when he had to. He laved open mouthed kisses up his neck, across his jaw, to the point of his chin. “What do you like?” he whispered against Kris’s mouth.

His eyes had fallen closed under Junmyeon’s attentions, but at the whispered question they opened again. Kris lifted a hand, traced a soft finger from the top of Junmyeon’s forehead, down the slope of his nose, over his lips.

“This,” he murmured.

Continuing down his throat and his chest, he pressed a hand over Junmyeon’s beating heart.

“This.”

The flat of his palm traveled down the center of his chest, over his belly, flipping slowly so first his fingers and then his hand dipped under the waistband of his sweatpants and his underwear, until he was cupping Junmyeon’s cock in his hand.

“This,” he said, breath shaking, eyes in his upturned face certain, and on fire.

Pressing forward helplessly into Kris’s palm, Junmyeon only barely managed not to stutter when he asked, voice dropping an octave, “How do you want me, sweetheart?”

Kris shivered, eyes fluttering. With a parting caress, he pulled his hand out of Junmyeon’s sweatpants and maneuvered himself more fully onto the slim single bed, laying on his back, letting his thighs fall open. There was a question in his eyes, like he wasn’t sure if that would be alright with Junmyeon, that had him almost scrambling to remove the last of his clothes, cock springing against his belly once it was free.

He climbed onto the bed, hovered over Kris, petting a hand down Kris’s quivering side. The nerves were coming off of him in waves.

“I don’t, I’ve never,” he babbled suddenly, clenching his teeth in fear or annoyance or both.

“Hush now,” Junmyeon shushed him, “I know, I’ve got you.” He kissed a line from the corner of Kris’s mouth to just next to his ear. “Let me take care of you,” he whispered, and felt the answering moan in his own chest.

They kissed, open, sloppy, somehow intense and languid at once. Kris couldn’t keep his hands to himself and Junmyeon didn’t want him to. Every touch was a brand, leaving a trail of fire across his skin in a way no other lover before him ever had. When he finally allowed his hips to rest on Kris’s so their erections were trapped between their bodies, they both moaned. Junmyeon pulled away for air and sucked bruising marks down Kris’s neck, marveling at the sounds he made, at the way he always clutched whatever bit of skin was within his reach, at the way their hips rutted against each other.

“Please,” Kris panted in Junmyeon’s ear, “please, fuck, _please_.”

“Please what, baby?” Junmyeon asked, leaving another mark on Kris’s pectoral, just above his nipple, making the other man whine.

In answer, Kris took one of Junmyeon’s hands and shoved it down so that his fingers were at Kris’s entrance. Eyebrows shooting up at the slickness he found there, Junmyeon traced the hole, and then moaned when he realized this man, this beautiful fantastic _literally otherworldly_ man had produced his own lube, his asshole already open and twitching against Junmyeon’s fingers.

He propped himself on one elbow and looked down at the man beneath him when he thrust two fingers into him. Kris’s eyes shot wide and his mouth opened in a silent scream, back arching up off the bed, hand still on Junmyeon’s wrist clenching _tight_ and pulling his fingers in even deeper. Junmyeon obliged him and thrusted, in and out, mesmerized by the way his beautiful mouth looked, the way he writhed against the sheets.

Just when he was about to lose his mind, patience cracking, Kris stuttered out, “N-need you, pl- _please_ ,” and Junmyeon pulled his fingers free so he could line his cock up at Kris’s entrance. He made eye contact with Kris, eyebrows raised in question, and Kris just grabbed him by the back of the head and licked into his mouth in answer.

“Fuck me,” Kris said, gasping, right against Junmyeon’s mouth.

Control shattered, he fucked into him, hard, one long slick _hot_ thrust and he was fully sheathed. They were both too keyed up to take a moment to adjust, Kris wild eyed and rocking his hips beneath him, so he set a punishing rhythm, pounding into him like he wouldn’t survive without it. Somewhere in the middle of it, lungs burning, moans and sounds and prayers to gods both human and alien falling out of their lips, Junmyeon wondered how he’d _ever_ survived without this beautiful, startling being wrapping his legs around his hips and rocking back into him like it was better than all the galaxies he must have seen.

They locked eyes, at the end, Kris _literally_ glowing. Kris said something, something Junmyeon couldn’t understand, something he thought maybe he could barely hear, like half of the word was said in a range of sound human ears couldn’t comprehend, but he saw in the universes reflected in Kris’s eyes that it had the same meaning as whatever the feeling was bursting out of Junmyeon’s chest.

Kris came, hard, pulling Junmyeon in with arms and legs, head thrown back, body bright with some inhuman force, and Junmyeon tipped forward into him, losing himself to orgasm, to the brightness, to whatever was happening between them.

Long minutes later, Junmyeon heard the alarming chime of the ‘ship coming back online after a reboot, and he couldn’t help but snort out a laugh. Kris made a questioning, almost hurt sound, so Junmyeon tipped his head, gently, with two fingers, until they were facing each other, until Kris could see the happiness on his face, and the loving teasing, when he said, “You turned the ‘ship off.”

Kris blinked, rapidly, for several seconds, turned to look at the ceiling, and started giggling, a sound so simple and so happy and so _young_ that Junmyeon couldn’t help but join in.

 

***

 

He is laying in a too-small bed on a too-small ship in his too-small form, watching Junmyeon dress and he thinks that he wants to _stay_.

He does not know how he will manage it, how he will be enough, how he will tolerate the confinement, the humanness, how he will find ways to be all of him and still be enough for this man.

But when Junmyeon turns back, pants loose on his hips, shirt barely tugged on, looking at him like he is a galaxy, cupping his face and kissing him like the taste of his mouth is better than the oxygen he needs to survive, he thinks, that maybe, just maybe, the feeling in the core of him can make anything possible.

 

***

 

Time seemed to speed up after the dam of sexual tension between them broke, the days starting to pass in a haze of work and life and an interdimensional being that had just discovered the joys of sex, of intimacy. Junmyeon shouldn’t have been surprised at Kris’s curiosity, he had been guardedly curious about everything since the moment they’d met, and he should’ve known this would be no different.

It lead to the strangest blow job he’d ever had in his entire life (he was pretty sure tentacles somehow came into play, but it was hard to tell _what_ precisely had been happening, only that it felt _amazing_ ) and also moments that were almost childlike they were so endearing. Kris made a point of presenting Junmyeon with a new flower, every day, at times that made sense only in his alien mind, in an offhand pseudo casual way, always looking at him out of the corner of his eye, and it never once failed to make Junmyeon smile.

Once, after several rounds of marathon sex (it turned out that having a sexual partner that had virtually no refractory period could be _very_ interesting) Junmyeon had padded out to the kitchen to get a glass of water, and Kris had followed, large bare feet slapping just a touch too loudly on the floor. Smiling privately to himself, Junmyeon filled a glass, drank from it deeply, expecting Kris to drape himself over his back, like his previous lovers would have done. When he didn’t, Junmyeon turned around to see Kris, stark naked, looking at him intently, a furrow between his eyebrows. His hand was stretched out to him, palm up.

Before Junmyeon could decide what the gesture was supposed to mean, a spray of delicate pink cherry blossoms rose from the center of Kris’s palm, swirling gently, like in a spring breeze. The blossoms traveled in twirling arcs, up, almost brushing the ceiling, and then down to dance around Junmyeon before landing on him, one by one, sticking for a moment before popping like bubbles. Where the blossoms touched, warmth seeped into Junmyeon, like water, but if water was made of laughter, and sunlight. The last blossom fluttered to his bottom lip, his mouth slightly open in awe, and it felt exactly like a dream he had had two nights before, Kris on an LA beach, mesmerized by the sand beneath his toes, kissing him with an irrepressible smile on his face, tasting like salt and happiness.

Junmyeon stood stunned. He recalled suddenly that just the day before he had recorded a video for the boys, ending his usual scientific updates with more personal hello’s, had mentioned that the cherry blossoms would be in bloom by the time the video got to them, and would Jongdae mind taking a few photos for him. Tears pricked, alarmingly, at the corners of his eyes. He never cried, not ever, not if he could help it, but the emotions lodged in his chest and in his throat had nowhere else to _go_.

Kris made a distressed sound, snatching his hand back, reaching it forward again, like he wanted to comfort Junmyeon but he didn’t know if he was allowed. _He thinks he’s hurt me_ , Junmyeon realized, and he immediately shook his head, staggered forward the two steps between them and pulled Kris into a crushing kiss. He tried to pour every emotion trapped inside him into the kiss, tried to say what couldn’t be said with words. He had no idea if it worked, but when he pulled back for breath, Kris took a long moment to open his eyes, a glistening dampness in the corners that Junmyeon refrained from mentioning.

The next video from Earth arrived about a month after that. In the data packet, along with all the official correspondence, were photos of the cherry blossoms, a few nicely shot, a few blurry pictures of Minseok and Jongdae on a grassy hill, laughing, with petals in their hair. There was also a short video from each of them. They must’ve all talked about his video together because they were all teasing him for how happy he looked, how well.

Sehun was the one who came right out and said it, “If I didn’t know better I’d say you’d found yourself a boy.” Junmyeon’s heart clenched.

He looked over at Kris, who was muttering to himself, musical scores floating around his head. He was composing, Junmyeon knew, had been for almost a week now, always making time to be with him but always a bit in the music, too. The sound was good, Kris’s voice resonant and his rapping solid, sad but also defiant.

Junmyeon imagined introducing him to the boys, imagined how crazy they’d think he was if in the next video message he let Kris pop into frame, told them he was bringing home more than just data and loneliness. It would be so hard, to bring him home, to keep him safe and out of the clutches of the types of scientists who would want to use him for experiments rather than respecting him as the sovereign being he was. But it would be easy, too. Junmyeon could imagine them all, together, how much they would all love him, how easy they’d be with their affection in all the ways Kris clearly craved.

Just a few short months ago, Junmyeon would have said he wanted nothing more than to be on Earth, to kiss the solid ground and stare up at clear blue sky. Now he wondered if it would even feel like home without a flower every day, without Kris to give them to him.

Kris looked up and smiled, came padding over and put his chin on top of Junmyeon’s head, tapped a beat with too-quick fingertips on his shoulder blades, and asked him what he was up to.

Junmyeon hummed in response, tipped his head back for a kiss, and started planning how to ask Kris to come home with him. How to ask him to stay.

 

***

 

He is stronger, now. He can see more, feel more, _be_ more, for longer.

He does not know if it is the time that has passed, or if love has made him more of himself. There are stranger things in this universe, he knows, than love having this type of power.

He could reach Earth now, he thinks, and there is nothing he truly wants more. He wants to see the sun in Junmyeon’s hair, to meet the men he cares for like brothers and children and friends and something deeper all at once. He wants to feel the November rain on his human skin.

And so, he tries.

It is late, to Junmyeon, at least. Kris does not experience sleep cycles, has felt something akin to fatigue but on a scale and in a time frame that makes it incomparable to the force that pulls his lover’s jaw into a yawn. He kisses him on that strong yet fragile joint and feels the muscles pull against his lips telling him Junmyeon is smiling.

He follows Junmyeon to bed, watches him undress, watches him redress. No lovemaking, he decides, not because he does not want to (he always wants to make love to him) but because Junmyeon has not been sleeping, something leaving a deep line in the skin on his forehead. He kisses him, and revels in the simple joy of Junmyeon cradling him in his smaller arms.

When his breathing drops off and the body holding him goes slack, Kris decides _now_ -

And he expands, first out of the ‘ship, tethered this time not to a bolt in the hull but wrapped around the second finger of Junmyeon’s left hand. Expands and expands and expands, past all the familiar stars that never spoke to him, past the places he’d only recently been able to reach. Past all the spots he’d reached for to watch the videos and the games, to see humanity. All the way to the sea.

Down down down and out, also, in every direction, but what matters is down, into the water, past the fish and the whales and the crustaceans, down and down until the light of the sun is gone. The creatures are strange by human standards but nothing compared to the things he passes in every other direction he stretches, the things humanity will never find because these things know to avoid them. Finally, with a stretch, he taps the sandy-muddy-stone-and-bone floor of the sea.

Giddy with victory he dances, floats himself around the entire roundness of the planet and touches it, gently, all of it, every living breathing bright and ugly and beautiful bit of it at once.

Thrilled and flooded with power and joy he _expands_ as he has never done before, everywhere, all at once, and for a moment or an eon he touches all of space. He touches time.

He sees and feels and hears and tastes all of the births and deaths and loves and betrayals on all of the planets in all of the universes across all of the moments past and present and future. He sees his mother, and no other seeing matters, after that. She engulfs him in love, like she knew he would be there. If he were in his human form, he does not know if he would be smiling, or weeping, or both.

But somehow, in some where of him, in some when, he becomes aware of something. He sees it happen, knowing that it has not happened, not yet, not to any being but him and his mother. She sees it too. There is no space for regret in the millisecond they have found each other again, in the eons they have been embracing. Neither of them know which it is. It is both and it is neither. She knows love, knows that is what he holds for Junmyeon. And so, she _pushes_.

He is back, back in his too-small human form, even more confining than it usually is. His pinky finger is wrapped around Junmyeon’s in the place a wedding ring would go. He will never put one there, he knows, now.

He will never have the time.

 

***

 

Junmyeon didn’t know what was happening until it was over.

First he felt Kris materialize beside him, pinky finger wrapped around his left ring finger where before there was only an odd phantom itch. Then he turned to tease him for something, he didn’t know what anymore, but before he could he was being kissed like he had never been kissed before, like a solar flare, like goodbye. And then he wasn’t him anymore, he was everywhere, and everything, and something he could barely understand.

Later he will know that a star they were passing imploded spontaneously, a never before seen event. Later he will remember all the sirens in the ship wailing, and he will remember the intense heat, but then, when it happened, he was reliving all of his moments with Kris through Kris’s eyes, from half a foot higher in the air.

He saw himself and the way he looked at Kris, felt the way he touched him, heard his own laugh. He felt the other man’s joy and the bubbling awe, and the irritation mixed with affection. He was ten planets big and lonelier than any being should be able to survive. He was stretched to watch a pick up basketball game in downtown Toronto. He was missing his mother with a fierceness and a rage that could incinerate galaxies.

He was in love, and that was the only thing that was truly familiar, the only sensation that felt like it could have been his own.

The last thing he registered was sorrow, and a determined lack of regret, and a gentle brush of something on his finger, like a kiss, like a ring.

He blacked out.

He woke up an unknown amount of time later and he was fine. The ship was fine. The sensors picked up so much data he will be lauded as a hero in the study of space.

But there was an emptiness where there didn’t used to be. Kris was gone, and somehow, in some impossible way, Junmyeon knew he was never coming back.

He slid to the floor and cried.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry :///
> 
> REMINDER! main character death is NOT TAGGED!!! here is where the dealing w loss of a loved one comes in, turn back now if that's not gonna be good for you (message if you got this far and would like to know the ending ❤)


	2. Epilogue

One year passed, most of it in a haze of work and grief. Junmyeon ate and slept precisely at the intervals and amounts recommended to him by his health advisers. He made minor repairs to the ‘ship, as needed, though she showed zero sign of damage from a colossal event that should have vaporized her, and him with her. He filed his reports diligently, and never once wrote in them _MISSING: One (1) interdimensional incorporeal being_.

The boys were worried about him, he could tell through the fog that shrouded most of his awareness, but he couldn't do a thing to relieve them. He smiled at them, and knew they could tell something was wrong, even if his supervisors, and at one point the President of South Korea, did not. They would chalk up his happiness and sudden deep depression (because that's what it was, no mincing words when you're part of a never before attempted space project) to intense isolation and cramped living quarters. He didn't care. Junmyeon didn't have the energy for it.

The return to Earth went flawlessly, all the parts breaking off that were supposed to, all the parts staying together that were supposed to, too. He'd had worse landings in airplanes. He doesn't tell anyone about the flash of regret that went through him when he didn't burn up in the atmosphere.

It was a whirlwind, after that, meeting after meeting after meeting. He barely had time to hug a few of his crew, Kyungsoo, Chanyeol, Jongin, before they were taking apart the remaining portion of the ‘ship, analyzing data, evaluating his psychological state. The ‘ship was reportedly in better shape than it was during its final safety checks, something none of them can answer for.

 _It's_ _just like Kris_ , Junmyeon thought, _to tighten up the screws and give the ‘ship a polish while sacrificing his life for me_.

One of the psychologists asked him what he was most looking forward to, now that he was back home. She gave him a long hard look when he hesitated, like she could see the way something in his gut flinched at the word “home.” He answered, said something about the sea, probably, something about his friends, his boys. She gave him a glowing psychological health report, and it took all he had in him not to laugh until he sobbed when his supervisor told him.

He tried to bury himself in work but something in that shrink report must have gone to his boss because suddenly he found himself on vacation, forced, no questions. None of the rest of his crew were, they all barely had time to say hello to him from behind their mountains of data and ‘ship redesigns, and planning the papers and books that needed to be written about everything Junmyeon had found out there.

So, he wandered. All around the world he wandered, no real plan or destination in mind. He met up with old friends and old boyfriends, couch surfed when he could, used the massive amounts of unused pay to splurge on ridiculous penthouse suites when he wanted.

He fucked every pretty boy he saw, for a while, until one day he saw a man in Paris that looked so much like Kris it made his breath catch. He couldn't stomach it, after that. Kept feeling phantom hands, phantom kisses. Kept waiting for the body beneath him to glow.

Sehun was the one who finally cornered him, showed up in LA unexpected, unannounced. He just walked up to him outside his hotel, tipped his sunglasses down, looked him over head to toe, and said, “You look like shit. What are you buying us for lunch?”

Junmyeon hadn't realized how much he'd missed Sehun until he tried to scowl at him and beamed instead.

It was easier, after that, to slowly unfurl into Earth's atmosphere, soak it up like a sponge. He stopped seeing Kris in every mullet, in every tall man, in every flower. Laughter quit feeling foreign, and sunlight finally felt warm again. The ocean in Malibu greeted him like a friend, and while the memory of that old dream he'd had, of Kris there, on that beach, smiling into a kiss, still hurt, it felt like maybe it was finally starting to heal.

Their joint vacation was cut short when Junmyeon received news he was to be given a medal, a promotion, and a book deal. There were talks of other awards, bigger awards for scientific achievement, but he wasn't going to push his luck, and he didn't care, besides. On the flight back to Seoul, Sehun leaned his head against Junmyeon's shoulder, and interlaced their fingers, and Junmyeon remembered that he'd had dreams, before Kris. Dreams for himself. Dreams for a future where he ran the space program, and made sure the stars weren't only something seen by a privileged few.

When he unlocked the door to his dusty house, he was ambushed by ten men all yelling their congratulations at once, Sehun grabbing him and shaking him by the shoulders, six of the crew present, the other three, Zitao, Luhan, and Yixing, all holoprojected onto a ‘screen held by Baekhyun.

Through the backslaps and smiles and hugs and affection, he learned they were all going to be honored for their work on the project, and that Yixing was going to be conducting his own one man mission for the Chinese Space Program, set to launch that very night. Junmyeon regretted not being able to see him before he left, and told him so, but Yixing had always understood putting work first, and also understood the toll doing that could put on a person.

Once the Chinese crew had disconnected, the rest of them started complaining about being hungry, and so, with Junmyeon rolling his eyes, they moved the party to a restaurant, and then, after possibly too much soju between them all, to a club.

Junmyeon danced, first with his boys, then just to feel the crowd writhing with life around him. He laughed when Minseok executed a perfect slut drop on a wildly uncomfortable Chanyeol, laughed when Kyungsoo finally got drunk enough to get into a twerking contest with Sehun. He smiled when Minseok and Jongdae found their way back to each other, like they always did, wrapped themselves in each other like it was as easy as breathing.

It was in the club that he realized, with the pounding bass and lights dancing a rainbow show all across his striking face, that he was in love with Sehun.

The crowd parted before him as he pressed through it to the door. He escaped into the alley, not gasping, but almost, on the edge of breathless with the revelation. Junmyeon couldn't decide what he was feeling, if he was worried he was betraying Kris's memory, or if he was terrified of loving someone again when losing could hurt so much. Without knowing he'd done it, he found himself leaned back against the bricks, staring up at the strip of stars visible between the buildings.

“Junmyeon?” Sehun said from beside him, a soft hand on his elbow. Junmyeon closed his eyes, suddenly dizzy. “Come on, let's get you home.”

Junmyeon followed Sehun back through the club, hand in hand, picking up their coats, Sehun yelling something to whichever of the others he ran into along the way. The cab ride back to his house was a blur of alcohol and whatever else was swirling in his gut.

As soon as they'd gotten through his door, shoes toes off neatly in the entrance, he walked, almost compelled, to the wide balcony off the living room. Junmyeon didn't realize he had never let go of Sehun's hand until he was looking up at the night sky, shivering, and Sehun released his grip only to wrap his arms around his middle.

 _Kris_ , Junmyeon thought to the stars, hoping somehow whatever remained of him could hear it, _I love you._ He considered if he should add more to his odd sort of prayer, if there was more he hadn't said and should have. But he imagined Kris knew, just like he knew Kris loved him, too.

And if he imagined, there, on that balcony, when he kissed Sehun in the moonlight, that Kris was smiling at him, well. No one ever needed to know.

 

***

 

He is small.

Smaller than he has ever been.

He isn’t even a thing isn’t a being, isn’t.

Until he is.

Until slowly, so very very slowly, he pieces himself back together. Grows, little by little. Stretches, minute by minute. Remembers himself. Remembers love. Remembers Junmyeon.

He was blown closer to Earth by the blast of the supernova, much closer. He barely has to stretch to see Earth. And so he sees when Junmyeon kisses Sehun on the balcony, sees a happiness so true he cannot be anything but glad he has found it, sees when he smiles up at the stars before he takes Sehun by the hand and brings him inside.

And he sees when Zhang Yixing boards the Namanana and blasts off the surface of the Earth.

He takes one last look at the planet and the man he has come so dearly to love. And he attaches himself to a bolt in the hull and decides to see what will happen next.

**Author's Note:**

> if you made it here, thank you ❤ comments are fuel for tired writers, and I'd love to know what you think of my weirdest (and longest!!) child. come and say hi on Twitter [ @nasaplates ] and curiouscat [ /nasaplates ] 💕


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